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Eating More Salt Is Acceptable?
 

Salt, or more precisely the sodium contained therein, is closely related with high blood pressure (hypertension). People who consume excessive amount of salt are known to be more likely to have high blood pressure. It is estimated that more than 1 billion adults worldwide have high blood pressure. The figure is projected to increase to 1.5 billion by the year of 2025. Every year, high blood pressure accounts for more than 9 million deaths.

Obviously, people are encouraged to eat less salt in order to prevent high blood pressure that might eventually lead to heart disease and stroke (cardiovascular disease). Unfortunately, most people consume between 3,000 and 6,000 mg of salt per day, comparing to 1,500-2,300 mg per day recommended by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and just 1,500 mg urged by the American Heart Association (AHA).

Surprisingly, new research suggested that healthy people could eat about twice the amount of salt that is currently recommended. An international study covering 102,216 persons in 18 countries suggested that while there is a relationship between salt intake and high blood pressure, if people do not already have high blood pressure and are not over 60 or eating too much salt, salt would not have much impact on their blood pressure.

In fact, people who consumed 3,000 to 6,000 mg per day had a lower risk of death and cardiovascular events than those who had more than 6,000 mg or less than 3,000 mg. The findings were published August 14, 2014 in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’.

This somehow contradicted the efforts to encourage people to consume less salt and to get the industry to lower salt content in their food products so as to prevent high blood pressure and subsequent heart disease and stroke. A recent announcement from the Institute of Medicine also warned that low salt levels might be problematic.

Editorial accompanied the study pointed out that people could actually do many more important things. For instance, a diet that cuts sugary drinks and approaches the Mediterranean diet would be more beneficial than just regulating the salt aspect of the diet.

Undoubtedly, very large amount of salt will certainly cause the blood pressure to go up, especially when one is not eating potassium concurrently. While high blood pressure is closely linked to heart disease and stroke, the correlation is strongest in people who have high blood pressure and older. Japanese are one of the highest salt consumers, yet they are also having one of the longest lifespans.

Naturally, the AHA objected the findings. Being observational, the study could not actually prove cause and effect or rule out other factors that might affect the findings, for example, whether people with poor health had already cut their salt intake to less than 3,000 mg. They were also concerned about how sodium was measured. There was no indication about the diet the participants who gave the urine specimens were eating and for how long they ate it after. In the study, the researchers just followed the participants for 3.7 years and then try to draw a relationship between one-spot urine and events that occurred over the next 3.7 years. Actually, the period of study was not long enough to draw long-term conclusions since heart disease and stroke could take decades to develop.

Another study, which was also published in The ‘New England Journal of Medicine’, used a modeling approach to combine results from a wide variety of studies and estimated that 1.6 million deaths from heart disease and stroke occurred in 2010 were linked to more than 2,000 mg/day of sodium intake.

Based on the results and previous studies suggesting reduced sodium intake was associated with reduced blood pressure, AHA reiterates that it would continue recommending lower sodium intake and urging the government to do the same.

Amid controversial arguments on the consumption of salt, people should try to eat natural foods that are cooked at home and avoid eating too much fast food and snack foods that are of very high salt content.

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